I don’t want to wake him, so I tell the doctor I’ll be back first thing in the morning, then sink into a hard plastic chair in the waiting room.

The chair beside me squeaks. “Well, that’s a relief, huh?”

I jump. “Nick! I forgot you were here!”

He raises his eyebrows. “The words I love to hear.”

“I didn’t mean . . . Ugh. You know. I was so caught up with Dad stuff that I forgot you came in here with me. Thank you, again, for driving me.”

“Of course,” he says. The two of us take a second to look around the waiting room, which is pretty deserted at this time of night.

“You know, I hate to brag, but I think we’re the best-dressed people in this hospital,” I say.

Nick smiles and hands me a package of Twix and a bottle of Coke. “I know this isn’t a gourmet snack or anything, but I was working with what the vending machine gave me.”

I tear open the package, then hesitate after I take a bite of Twix. Nick got this for me, without me asking. I know it’s only candy, and I shouldn’t be getting emotional over anything that comes out of a hospital vending machine, but it’s been an emotional day.

I know everything else in my life is taking up one hundred percent of my time and attention (the fact that I’m in a hospital waiting room right now is a perfect example of that), but I let myself imagine for a moment what it would be like if Nick and I were together. In a relationship. Not a Netflix-and-chill situation like with Mikey Danger, or a no-strings, no-expectations thing like I’ve always had with everyone else, the kind of situation where I can never really drop my guard and relax. With Nick, I’m myself, all the time. I don’t have to be responsible Chloe, caregiver Chloe, or therapist Chloe, because Nick doesn’t need me to take care of him.

It’s not that I don’t have people I can count on. I do. I have Annie, and Tracey, and Uncle Don, and probably even Tobin if the emergency in question isn’t time sensitive. But I’ve never wanted to depend on them, because I know what happens when you really let yourself rely on another person and then they disappear. You end up making your own fourth-grade Christmas concert costume at the last minute. It’s easier to just make your own costume in the first place; that way the only person who can disappoint you is yourself.

I’m always the person in the waiting room, because I would never ask anyone to wait for me. But as I watch Nick, I realize that I could get used to having someone here, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

My eyes run over the angles of his face as he looks at his phone. The sharpness of his nose, the dark rumpled mess of his hair, the tantalizing scruff on his jaw.